A Shadow in Yucatan
Read A Shadow in Yucatan Online
Authors: Philippa Rees
Tags: #grief and loss, #florida mythology, #jewish identity in america, #grand central station, #poignant love story, #maturity and understanding, #poetic intimacy, #sixties fiction
Yucatán
(A Tale Sung in
Exile)
by
Cover design: Philippa
Rees, Ana Grigoriu
Book Interior
:
Philippa Rees
Photographs
:
Cover and some internal images Crestock
others Shutterstock
First Print Edition
2006
This Smashwords edition
published by:
CollaborArt Books
Copyright:Philippa Rees
2014
ISBN
978-0-9575002-4-2
All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means
without the prior permission of the author, nor be otherwise
circulated.
This book is
licensed for your enjoyment only. If you would like to share it
with another person please purchase an additional copy. If you are
reading this book and it was not purchased for or by you please
respect the hard work of the author and purchase your own copy.
Thank you.
Table of Contents
7.With a Truckee
Hitching North
Dedicated to the Nameless
Girl.
El Progresso
was further than the back of beyond.
It was the
flywhisk refuge of the poor waiting for winter work and the sharks
that cruised past in hope of the equally unlikely; a dry landscape
of fathomless cenotes and human sacrifice.
Here in
pitiless sun this tale was spilt, by a troubadour of sorts, a girl
who had fled her past, blindly and in pain. I have written it for
her, and for others that remember the eclipse of joy. The setting
has been changed; the characters are fictitious, but our betrayal
was universal. We were betrayed by our hunger for hope.
This song is a
lament.
The Beauty Parlour, Coconut
Grove
.
All day the
cycles swing around the window, the tanned legs flattered by the
double glass then arrested...Ratchets buzz impatient..
The slow generator arbitrates...
The green light frees the traffic’s undertow.
Reflected
twice, the lightweight English Raleighs, gears, toe-clips, nudge
the dryers against the far white wall.
Wink and seduce the gap-toothed rubber plant, skewer Mrs. Sklayne
at her pedicure, with spokes.
‘
Not too short at
back...mind the kiss curl’s at the side...let me remove my
spectacles…’
‘
Vogue or Harpers,
take ya pick?
Will y’ave coffee, chocolate or iced milk?’
Stephanie works
fast,
(she’s real nice Steph
...)
not smart y’hear, but steady, plain but clean;
her fair-isle sweater under the gingham darned at the elbow
'But the ankles, it’s
a shame, a shade too thick.
She’s been with us, let’s see...goin on three years and as I
recall, never a day missed...
Quiet with the customers, never chatty...that sort leave..
Ten fifty altogether...have a nice day...’
‘
Where the hell’s
that cheeseburger?
‘I jus gotta have a cigarette’
*****
‘
Are you early lunch
or late?’
Stephanie
shrugs, her wide mouth full of pins.
She fixes the bangs, sprays and dusts the neck... powder tin is
empty...
‘
Drugstore’ll be
crowded’
‘
I’ll eat my apple
in the park’
‘
Yeah? Well suit
y’self. I’m blowin. Gotta rip.’
*****
The tide is
out, the grass worn summer-thin.
The cymbal-shakin Hare Krishna set have gone to swim.
The wind is blowin west, there ain’t one jib, the burgees up the
masts a yelpin din...
The pelicans have gone.
‘
Christ I feel
sick!’
Wally’s in his
hammock with his kids,
his squint son, bored with bark, with woodlice, and the tethered
tree.
His daughter sunk in her talcum sleep is stroked...
The monocle of light, now focussed, flames her hair, it lifts, it
falls, it curves, conceals...
Her open nectar-mouth, now shaded, breathes.
He peers
between his knees into the dust
unable to distinguish screw from seed...
He sifts with fingers, looks beneath his thigh,
investigates the folds of sock, and sighs...
Balanced on one
palm he rolls erect and goes to pull a rush leaf by the
hedge,
splits it with his neat sharp teeth,
curves length along an easy tongue...
Binds his bifocal frames with green, and sits back down.
Now he takes up
and tunes a steel banjo.
His hands, with nails kept short, are competent and quick.
They guide the dolphin sounds through hoops of tree; he bends, he
turns, harks with ear inclined...
It reaches pitch. It thrums and calls...he seldom plays,
he keeps it tuned, in case.
He’s come far,
has Wally, in the years, come March, since Annie rode away astride
a pillion, arms around her black...OK her darkie...(Nigger if
y’like)
Shacked up in Oregon...he isn’t sure. She does not often
write.
The kids, the bike, banjo, all-purpose knife,
comprise his got-together, self-sufficient life.
‘
I ain’t
sold’
Stephanie’s
doubts confuse, her hopes weave round and round.
She’s walking straight, though slowly, on the shore
queasy as that oil slick on the sand
‘
Tar barrels, fish
and quarrelling gulls sure don’t help me stomach varnish, acetone
and cream...
His small girl needs a mama, that’s for sure...
I’d bake us pizza, we could cut cookies..
‘
I’m gonna be
sick
!’
Wally
stops.
He knows the scene.
Man, that’s too
much!
That girl beyond the saw grass...she’s alone...
and why she’s bending down so low?
Her back convulses, shows its spine, and
spews...
The gulls come circling...
peck, startled, skid the retch recoil,
relentless pump, the thud
.
She’s fallen on her
knees...no she gets up...
she’s goin to splash her face in curvin brine.
Discards her
sandals, rinses and then spits...She spits twice more.
Enjoys the tang of salt, the clear clean sting of salt, of salt, of
salt...
A welling unimpeded view of everything.
‘
Yer pregnant ain’t
ya?’
Wally’s all
concern.
For all his hard won sinew, he’s a family man.
He loves his children, loves his loving too...
‘
Honest, I don
know’
Fearing another
bout with bile, she half turns away.
Slowly redeemed, her shoulders sink; the sulky sea turns
chill.
The strutting flicking feathers hunch. The shadows too blanch
dim...
Evaporating light...the light holds everything
She thought she
saw...
His eyes see emptying.
*****
A candid light
returns, a flood-lamp sun, angled to define both weight and
line.
Her sweating hands smooth skirt, and fasten shoe...
He plants his feet still deeper in the mud
'Oughta find out
soon‘
He scratches an
elbow.
She bends her head.
A dried reed rattles. A lifting sail subsides...
‘
It’s no good hangin
out. What is, is bound t’be...
I know a doc, works way up-town, a regular medic, not some knife
happy loon
I don suppose you’d go to y’ own.
If you drive up past Funland, past the ole dry dam...
Tell you what, come back. I’ll write it down.’
Stephanie
follows, servile, blind, searching for water through her seeping
mind...
The sea, the sky, and buried somewhere under salt...the
effervescent tongue refreshing view...
But in the distance, at her feet, she sees only a child asleep.
A banjo, a bag,
split, full of diapers, nuts and mixed dried fruit...
a diet for a life, the open road.
The weightless child asleep, and loneliness the load.
She folds the
paper, thanks him, leaves him to the leaves, and goes.
*****
Two saffron
monks, pale-pated, cross the grass.
Their discourse falls in folds, their hands elaborate, perennial
truth perhaps...
(Perhaps the price of rice.)
The shafted pencil-light writes clearly on their crowns; the ankles
trace the shadows, but the bare feet laugh...
Avid for a
taste of their measured paced-out peace, Stephanie picks an unripe
lime.
Bites bravely through its grim green skin...
The eyes goddam-it water, the astringent palate smarts...
She sucks at it regardless...squeezing and recoiling, she kicks off
her shoes...
disdains the easy somersault, accepts the broken glass...
‘It’s good, it’s good, some
ways it’s great! I’m dressed in polished poplin..
Inside I feel all new...
’
Then euphoria
hits the sidewalk. She begins to smooth her hair.
The sleek glass
door is guillotine to any thoughtless tread...
The receptionist surveys any likely unwashed head...
Stephanie is pole-axed, overpowered, drained by air-conditioned
talcum, re-circulated scent, plushy velvet drapes, glossy blown-up
prints.
Ye Gods is this the
morgue? Must I undertake the corpse?
Lacquer for internment, ritual oils and masks...
Go daub your dead with war paint
let’ em paddle their own hearse.
‘
Why there y’are
honey...Mrs. Beale’s in number three...
She says she’s pushed for time...make it snappy, there’s a
dear...
Just a wash and shingle...no, today no facial hair...’
Thank God tomorrow’s
Friday. I’ll just get through this week.
‘
Say please pass my
lighter. And Joe?...out back...Joe! Joe!
Oh Joe, order lemon
tea'.
Twenty-eighth street South, holds
credit potential and promise.
Once a grove of palms, rattling perpetually...
Now a lattice, plotted on points, two trees to each house, each
pruned to the axis of the unfettered cable...
Only the occasional fruit, silently ripening...seed
accurate...
The perpendicular plumb-line bomb
(A small cycle
was found crumpled in the cover it bucked into un-steered; a hedge
in bloom with passion flowers...)